Francis Collins replied to my cloning question with : "Your question is a
difficult one to answer. Are all efforts to block misuse of science doomed
to failure? It depends on your standard of success. I would argue that an
international ban on reproductive human cloning (which is currently being
considered by the UN) should provide a major deterrent -- but it will not be
100% effective in stopping those few kooks who decide to proceed anyway.
Still, I think the mandate is very
strong to do the best we can to prevent such outcomes, and punish the kooks,
when real human suffering is involved"
I understand -- and probably support your views as expressed above. I think
I was taking a longer view, however. "Punishing the kooks" has its own
justifications, but is really not of much interest. Neither are laws to ban
human cloning of much interest if all they do is deter the event by a few
months or even a couple of years. On the other hand, if such laws have a
reasonable chance of succeeding in a deterence of -- say -- 10 or 20 years,
I could see justification for them.
I don't place much credence in the current Italian claim, but it does seem
to me that US laws -- even laws passed by most civilized countries -- are
not really going to have much, if any, real slowdown effect. I take your
reply as not contesting that judgement, but not agreeing with it either.
Thanks much for the dialog on this.
John
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 08 2002 - 15:42:37 EDT